A Diamond in the Dark (2 page)

After drying off and pulling his jeans on, Axton stepped out of the bathroom to an instantaneous cock rising sight. He had just polished the thing twice, you’d think it would be staying down, but no, wasn’t going to happen with that rather lush ass pointing at him. Fucking hell! She had a G-string on under that tiny skirt. Swallowing his tongue, he did the only thing he could think of to get her attention. Something that didn’t include storming up behind her and licking one of those very white ass cheeks.
Christ, I need to get laid.

Reaching back to grab the bathroom door handle, he slammed the door shut. Axton watched as she rolled to the floor, her knees pulling tight against her chest and tears flowing down her face. Without thought he hurried across the room to kneel beside her, his hands going to her face. His fingers, taking on a mind of their own, ran over her petal-soft skin. She looked at him, blinking, a look of both wonderment and confusion filling her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Tia.” Shit, he hadn’t seen Tia cry since the night her prom date stood her up, which also happened to be his fault. But what she didn’t know didn’t hurt her.
Right?
The kid had been a little dweeb anyway.

Axton remembered walking into the hardware store in Mason. There had been a bunch of teenage boys he recognized from Lewisville talking to the Dillon kid while he was stocking the shelves. Ax hadn’t paid much attention to them until he’d heard Tia’s name.

One of the boys was taunting the Dillon kid about whether he’d be able to pop Tia’s cherry. And teasing him that he better be able to run fast or he stood a chance of the McGraetty men hunting him down. Whoever the kid with the mouth had been, he must have had some sense about him, because as he’d seen Axton come around the corner from the other aisle, he had bolted like a champion racehorse. It was the little talk Ax had with the boys, particularly the Dillon kid, that resulted in Tia being stood up on prom night.

Tia’s whimper brought him back to the present and had a wash of guilt coursing through him for causing her more pain than she was undeniably already in. There was no doubt in his mind that she had to be suffering from drinking her weight in alcohol, and the sound of the slamming door would have been excruciating for her.

Picking her up, Axton suppressed a growl at the feel of her ass filling his hand and her head resting against his chest. He placed her on the bed, having to physically restrain himself from joining her.
I seriously need to get laid, and soon.

Crossing the room to the bag he’d brought with him, one he always kept in his truck for times when he couldn’t make it home, Ax searched for the painkillers he knew were hidden somewhere in the bottom.

“Axton, what are you doing here? And for the love of God, would you please put a shirt on!”

He turned around to face her. Tia’s eyes widened as they landed on his chest, and he thought he could see a sliver of lust in their changing color. Tia had unique eyes, beautiful eyes, which seemed to change color with her mood. Mental images of her licking over his torso filled his mind, and he shook them out of his head.

“When did you get a nipple piercing?” she asked.

Now the thought of her wrapping her lips around the ring and tugging at the hard metal had his abs rippling with excitement. Christ, he needed to stop thinking about her in a sexual way. The amount of times he had fantasized about her doing things to his body that were not family appropriate was becoming ridiculous. Trying to take his mind off the visions running through it, he focused on answering her questions.

“One, we’re at Smokin’ Tom’s. Two, I rescued you from doing something, or someone, you really didn’t want to be doing. And three, I got it a couple of months back. Do you like it?”

Why he’d asked for her opinion when he was still trying to get the images of her mouth sucking at the ring out of his head, confused him, but something inside of him genuinely wanted her to like it. He had gotten it done just before Christmas when he and a few of his buddies had gone into Houston to blow off steam. They were all getting tats done, but seeing how his back was already covered with a large phoenix spanning from his shoulders to his tailbone, he decided to do something different, and got one of his nipples pierced.

“It’s hot.” Her hand covered her mouth as soon as the words came out, and a pink tinge of color spread over her beautiful face. The word
hot
rolled around his mind like the balls on a pool table.

Hot. She thought it was hot. As in, it was hot on him or on any guy that had one?

He felt like he’d stepped back in time, the thought patterns of his brain being the equivalent to that of his teenage years when he would strut around showing off muscle to impress the girls. On the other hand, his cock apparently didn’t care and was one hundred percent certain she was talking about him and him alone. It was in the process of trying to wave at her in thanks, but was being hindered by the tight fit of his Levi’s.

Niece, sister, family. Grrrrr.

He had to get her out of the room for a few minutes while he got his body under control. Reaching over, he shoved the Tylenol into Tia’s hand. He wasn’t really irritated with her, it was more the fact that he was cranky with the way his body was reacting to her. Surely at his age having a constant hard-on was a little dangerous, depriving his heart of vital blood?

“Here, take three of these. Then go and have a shower. I need to get back to the ranch, and we’ve got over an hour’s drive. And you stink like a friggin’ brewery.”

* * * *

Well, if that wasn’t a little bipolar. Talking about piercings one minute, then being snapped at like a misbehaving dog the next. If Tia’s head wasn’t jackhammering away, she would have given Ax what for, but instead she got up and went into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower.

She was halfway through washing herself when the thought hit her that not too long ago Axton had stood in the same shower, gloriously naked. Oh, the images that gave her. If she’d had the energy, she would have spent a little more time cleaning her clit.

What the heck? She’d read somewhere that orgasms release endorphins, and endorphins were good for headaches, so what better way to cure her throbbing head? Soaping up her fingers, she had just started to get a nice rhythm going when Ax knocked on the door, interrupting the beautiful, tingling feeling that had started to vibrate through her body.

“Hurry up, Tia. We need to get a move on.”

Really, was it too much to ask for him to either come in and join her, or to shut the fuck up? Giving up on the idea of an orgasm, Tia washed her hair.

By the time she was finished, the hot water having run cold, she felt marginally better. Not as good as she would have if she had achieved that endorphin release, but better. Her pounding head had turned into a dull ache, and it no longer felt like lightning bolts were hitting her eyes.

Drying off, she redressed sans her underwear, because that was just gross, before opening the bathroom door. A puff of steam preceded her into the adjoining room. Tia noticed Axton had made use of her time in the shower by grabbing them both breakfast burgers from the diner across the street. He had also bought her a toothbrush and toothpaste, which had her jumping for joy. Well, almost. Seeing as her head was still a little tender, doing that would have been ill-advised.

Brushing a kiss across his cheek, she ducked back into the bathroom to scrub her mouth out, which had previously tasted like she’d been eating straw that had been mucked from one of the barn stalls. There was only so much hot water could do, so the minty freshness was like heaven to her taste buds. Now feeling ten times better from the simple act of dental hygiene, Tia felt like she could face the world.

Instead she got Axton’s grumpy attitude and the suggestion that they eat in the car.

* * * *

“Here, I’ll give you a boost up,” Ax offered as he grabbed her around the waist to lift her into the cab of his truck. The hangover must be worse than he thought. Yeah, she was short, only about five foot two, but the truck wasn’t that high.

“Ax, stop!”

The hint of panic in her voice froze him in place, one hand on her ass, the other holding her around the waist. “What? What’s wrong?”

A small giggle preceded her answer. “Umm, Ax, I’m not wearing any underwear. I was hesitating because I was trying to figure out how to get in without flashing the street.”

Unable to help his reaction, Axton’s fingers flexed and squeezed her plush ass cheek, his teeth drawing blood from his own tongue as he stopped the groan of need escaping.

Well, Axton had no idea what to do now. He already had his hand on her ass and her halfway lifted to the truck cab, so what the hell, he finished the task, setting her inside, then slammed the door shut. He stormed around to the driver’s side of his truck, all the while having a silent conversation with his dick, ordering it to behave and stay the fuck down.

Stopping beside the door, he took a few deep breaths, a wasted effort in trying to calm his rising arousal. He jumped into the cab of the truck, his ass only just making contact with the seat as Tia handed him his burger. Then she started eating her own like that fact was no big deal.

She had no panties on, and she acted like nothing happened. He was lusting over his sister/niece while she happily munched away on her burger, seemingly oblivious to the effect she was having on him. He also needed to stop thinking of her in that term, he was starting to sound like a friggin’ hillbilly.

Not being able to leave well enough alone, he had to ask. “Why the hell are you not wearing any panties?” he growled at her. “I know you had them on before you went into the shower!”

Okay, maybe pointing out the fact that he had gotten an eye full of her nicely rounded ass was something he shouldn’t have done. But hey, he was a red-blooded American, sitting beside a beautiful woman who wasn’t wearing anything under what she considered to be a skirt. Personally, he figured the scrap of material could double as a belt. And all the while he was having inappropriate thoughts about someone that all the McGraettys considered family.
Shit.

When he turned to look at her Tia was staring at him with a funny look on her face.

“How did you know I had panties on before my shower?”

“You had your ass in the fucking air when I walked out of the bathroom.”

Tia turned almost crimson with that statement.

So what if he sounded like a jerk? His head was all over the place. Thinking things that he really, really shouldn’t be thinking, making his dick stand up and salute her.

His unruly body part was starting to piss him off. His dick was behaving like a randy friggin’ teenager. At thirty-six he still had stamina, but fucking hell, he had jacked off twice not even forty minutes ago, and the damn thing wouldn’t stay down.

“Sorry about the flash, but here’s a question for you—are you wearing any underwear?” Tia stared at him, waiting for his answer. “Ax, you gonna answer my question or what?”

“What has my wearing underwear got to do with anything?” He was beginning to regret even starting this conversation. Why did she have to ask that particular question! Now his brain was happily pointing out to him the fact they were both without underclothes, and what could happen if other clothes were removed.

“Just answer the question. Do you have underwear on?”

“No!” he screamed, needing her to shut up so he could get his body under control. Again he asked himself why he’d asked the fucked up question in the first place.

“Well, what makes you think I would put my dirty underwear back on when you didn’t? It’s just gross, and it’s not like anyone was going to know.” Aggravation swarmed through Axton as she said all this with a smartass tone in her voice.

“I didn’t have dirty underwear to put back on because I never wear it,” Axton threw back at her, then proceeded to stuff his burger into his mouth, needing to shut the darn thing up before it had the chance to say anything else.
Stupid!

* * * *

Tia tried to choke down the bite of burger that lodged in her throat with that tidbit of information. After taking a much needed drink of the juice Axton had also picked up, she sat back in her seat and looked out the side window, because honestly if she looked at him at that moment, her focus would be drawn down to his lap and there it would stay. With the hope that somehow, by some miracle, his jeans would disappear and she would finally be able to see what she had never seen outside of her secret time spent on the internet.

Chapter 2

Axton laid in bed, tossing and turning, because he couldn’t get thoughts of Tia out of his mind. After the stupid argument about their lack of underwear, she had fallen asleep. He had spent the drive home alternating between watching the road and looking at her.

She wasn’t gorgeous like the supermodels of today, but she sure was pretty. She had the looks of a 1950’s pin-up, and he’d always had a thing for those calendars. When he was just a boy his pa had a heap of them stashed in the barn where his ma wouldn’t find them. One day while sneaking up on his brothers from behind a bale of hay, Ax had caught them looking at the collection of magazines and calendars. Later that night when everyone was asleep he’d gone back to where he’d seen his brother put them and moved one somewhere else, just for himself. Ever since then, Ax couldn’t think of anything that turned him on more than a curvy, fuller-bodied woman. And Tia was all curves.

Her hair had come out of the loose braid she had put it in and was hanging over her like a living blanket. When he realized he was stroking a few strands through his fingers, he dropped it as if he’d been petting a rattler. Thank God she’d never know what he’d been doing.

About a half hour later, he was staring at her breasts. They bounced with every little bump that his truck hit. Maybe he hit a few more than needed, but hell it was a sight to see. As if any man with eyes wouldn’t be watching that. She must be a double D. His dick had been sending images to his brain of him burying his face between those two luscious mounds. Just before his thought could’ve gotten any more fucked up, he looked up, swerving sharply to avoid hitting the fence post leading into the Three Circle Ranch. Which in turn woke Tia up, ending his ogling session.